Master Shower Reveal

I was going to start by saying, "Probably the worst room in the house was the master bath." but then I thought about it and I don't know if I can pick a worst room. This one was pretty bad, but, so was the kids bath, the kids rooms, the bottom floor... Yep, they were all gross.

To give you an idea of the master shower/toilet area, we opened the door 1/2 way for it to hit the shower door. Then you would have to squeeze into the toilet to close the door and finally you could look at this tiny motorhome size shower my husband probably couldn't fit in.

See that (below) open door, 2 more inches and it hit that (above).

 Yucky pealing paint and musty smell.

I think this picture was on a good day. Cleaner then I saw it the first time.

You may think this picture doesn't relate to the bathroom, but just you wait and see. I didn't like how the upstairs hall ways was just door after door after door. It was blah!

Bye, bye closet, hello bigger shower! Since we had a closet where the heater used to be before it was moved into the attic, I didn't want this closet too. And, here this is proof that I did work too. The sledge hammering was fun as things were flying all over the place, but once you get to a certain point that it gets hard, I hand it over to the guy with the big muscles.

Yep, that's him, he finishes the job off quite nicely.

Then this part gets handed off to his dad. Even inside our walls is nice now. Nobody can see it, but I know the drains are the diameter they are supposed to be and not 1/2 an inch like the old ones.

Once Dr. C finished the nice new shower frame, we had it hot mopped then he painted this water proof red stuff and handed the job over once again to his dad.

Not an easy task! This tile took a long time. I don't even remember how long it took and I don't really want to remember. All I know is I have this amazing natural shower that I get to use every morning. I love the dimmer for middle of the night showers when I get called to a birth. All the way dim is just enough light for me to see and not blinding.

Closet becomes shower and now the door opens completely to the wall.

New toilet side and room to dry off and put lotion on before walking out onto the hard wood.

Toilet before and after:

Shower before and after:

Here is the top of the stairs before and after also. This wall gave us such heartache! We spent so much time mudding, sanding, mudding, sanding, taking out the drywall, putting in new for the 2nd time, mudding, sanding, mudding, sanding, etc. Then we realized that it was build 2 inches further out on the left of the door then the rest of the hall. That's why we couldn't get it completely flat! Looks not bad though.

As you can see there is still work to be done. Floors are finished upstairs, but downstairs, they are just sitting in boxes still. Hopefully we can start next week on that.

I'm getting better about blogging, so stay tuned for more next week. (Hopefully!)

L's Room Before and After

We are finally little by little completing rooms! It is hard, cause another project gets started before a different one is finished. The kids have been sleeping in their rooms since early August and I am just doing the finishing touches. I have one more thing I want to do in L's room, but that might take a little while, so I decided to reveal it now.

Remember this wonderful before?

Disgusting, smelly, pee soaked carpet!

Lovely walls.

And demo, all the subfloor was soaked with pee as well, so that had to come out and get completely replaced with new plywood.

Here we go, welcome to L's new room!

I got inspired by the model homes up the street.

The help we have had and still have was/is amazing. It would not have been worth it and we could not have done it all without all the amazing friends and family!

Another inspiration from the models up the street.

It's coming together!

This is where I am not done. I want a tree painted up the wall on the left and the light pink and dark pink flowers floating over the house.

Some comparisons:

The floor:

The walls:

Stay tuned for C's room or the master bathroom! (Now that I got my pictures off my camera and can actually find them between the 4 different drives on the computer.)

Kids Bath

Wow! We have come a long way. I was just looking back at this post and I was encourage and amazed. First, let me give you a little explanation on where I have been. On July 1st we moved into our new house. It was a construction zone and for a while we slept on a blow up mattress in the living room on concrete floors. It wasn't until August that the kids had beds in their rooms and a few weeks later that our blow up mattress was in our room. By September we had a bed in our room. That entire time we had no internet and we still have no TV. So, long story short, we have been working on the house so much that I haven't been able to blog it.

Now we have some rooms almost all the way done. By almost, I mean, there are no decorations on the walls. I have been anxious to get back to blogging so I am going to start posting before I start decorating.

Remember this bathroom?

We were not going to completely remodel this bathroom. We were going to give it a face lift. Well, the second Friday into demo, the Friday we were supposed to be done with demo, Mr. C decides we need to gut it. Yep! completely gut the bathroom. We went back and forth about 10 times that day on yes and no till finally on the condition that it is demoed and the entire bathroom was at the dump by 4 pm Saturday (closing), then I would be ok with it.

Saturday morning, bright and early, here is our amazing crew. I am so grateful NOW for the decision because Mr. C was right, it needed to be gutted. I am also so grateful to this wonderful demo crew who got the job done on my time schedule.

See, up at that first picture? There is a wall between the vanity and toilet. That is GONE! Yay.

The plumbing was completely replaced by our wonderful plumber, A.K.A. Mr. C's dad. Although this is Mr. C getting himself a little dirty after turning on the water to check for leaks. Good thing we checked cause the water went everywhere!

Here is the bathroom with a new tub and ready for paint. Picking paint colors was the worst job for this room. It took me forever.

But, one night I went to Home Depot, (without Mr. C) grabbed my tile and picked the first color that went with it. I LOVE it.

Those glass tiles are what I matched the paint to. There is Mr. C, and our plumber, did I mention he is also the tiler and electrician?

Back to that lovely paint. It kept pealing. Turns out the old stuff was oil based. We pealed ALL the paint off the walls, I primered with a special primer for that purpose and repainted only to paint with a new can that was mixed too dark. So, back to the store for yet another can of paint in the right shade. This bathroom has been painted way too many times. Between multiple coats, scraping, primer, re-paint and re-paint the total comes to 9 times!

Here we are making progress! See that cabinet? That is the second cabinet we got for this bathroom. My husband who is a perfectionist didn't measure the first time and bought a cabinet that was way to small. We realized it after we carried it upstairs and put it in the spot.

Progress and no more mistakes!

All done! Usable, working, clean bathroom. It works great for a family of 4. It gets a little messy, but we still have a lot of work to do in the other bathrooms.

Hopefully, I will be able to update more often now.

Still more to destory

I thought demo was done, or I thought we could start putting the house back together yesterday afternoon when I was leaving the dump. But... today all the drains to the 2 upstairs bathrooms came out. All this came out...

And this:

Friday, Mr. C and I were going back and forth about demoing this bathroom. It was no we won't, yes we will, no, yes, no, yes. Saturday morning it was a YES and there it went. Bye, bye kids bathroom. Hello new demo crew.

Even though it was hard to see another thing destroyed in our house, it was a good thing. When a board was removed by the toilet drain, it fell off. Yep, it just fell off. The drain was just sitting in there not properly attached to anything. DISGUSTING!

I have been passing by the family room day after day with this awful tile that is a pain in the but to remove. The tiny jack hammer wasn't working too well and my mother-in-law suggested this little sledge hammer thing. I tried it and the tile went flying all over the place. It came out so easy, but needed a hard hit to get it good.

You know when you go to the gym and work your legs so hard that you can hardly walk up of down any stairs and they are all shaky? Well, that's how my arms felt after hitting the floor for about an hour. Not to mention the little flying shards that killed my knees.

That other bathroom we took out had a little half wall. We thought no way would that be load barring because of the location. Well it turns out one of the joists was cut, so it was holding that up. Mr. C had to go up into the attic and fix what was cut so that little wall could be safely removed. The attic is not a pleasant place.

Would you like to see some of my crew? From left to right: Hot foreman, Non-stop awesome demo guy, pop in help with what you need guy, electrician/plumber.

Now the better half of the crew. My mother-in-law has cleaned the kitchen probably 20 times in the last week, tried to keep everyone organized and she has cleaned up every mess all those guys have left behind while working in the back yard and taking my kids for some part of every day. We really couldn't do it without all this help! They are amazing.

While we worked yesterday the kids got to enjoy the pool for the first time. It was great for them and now little C doesn't want to do anything but swim.

Can you see, I'm a little paranoid? If I am not the adult watching, he has to wear his life vest.

Hopefully tomorrow I will have a room painted. Maybe Tuesday we will have some bathroom drains back in place. Saturday is moving day. I don't think we will be moving into our house, maybe just the trailer at the side of the house. At least I have a kitchen though and it is roach free!! We did set off more bombs and I was relieved to find the house free of roaches this morning.